Using UNICODE to type special characters in UbuntuMATE

How to put the Ü in Über?

Koneet Kiertoon installs our computers primarily with UbuntuMATE. A customer asked us recently about typing special characters. He had previously used Windows in which you can use the ALT-key and the ASCII code for a character on the numpad to enter the occasional ”odd” character.

UbuntuMATE has a similar approach, but uses the more up-to-date UNICODE codes.

Ctrl-Shift-U gets you started

To start, hold down the Ctrl and Shift keys and press and release the ”u” key (and now you release all the keys). This should give you give you an underlined letter u. Now press and release the unicode sequence that represents the character you want to type. In our case Ü is ASCII code 220, but UNICODE DC (or you may see it listed somewhere as 0x00DC), so type ”d”, then ”c”, then enter. At that point you should get the letter you want: Ü. Note that the actual code for the character is 00DC, but the leading zeroes may be left off. Or you can type them, it doesn’t matter!

It should go something like this:

Ctrl+Shift+”u” (you see u)

”d” (you see ud)

”c” (you see udc)

”Enter” (you see Ü)

Where to find codes for special characters?

Is that it?

Well, as is so often the case with computers there are any number of ways to create special characters. UbuntuMATE, which comes pre-installed on most Koneet Kiertoon computers, also includes a program called Character Map (found under Applications –> Accessories), which one can use to copy special characters to the clipboard ready for pasting. Do you have another way to do it? Let us know!